Pablo Neruda: Likeness

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”
— Pablo Neruda
From 100 Love Sonnets
like this quote”

“You are like nobody since I love you.”

“so I wait for you like a lonely house
till you will see me again and live in me.
Till then my windows ache.”

“Green was the silence, wet was the light,
the month of June trembled like a butterfly.”

“Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness, and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.”

“A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices.”

“Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.”

“Like them you are tall and taciturn, and you are sad, all at once, like a voyage.”

“I am alone with rickety materials,
the rain falls on me, and it is like me,
it is like me in its raving, alone in the dead world,
repulsed as it falls, and with no persistent form.”

“In love, you have loosened yourself like seawater”

“And I, infinitesima­l being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.”

“At night I dream that you and I are two plants
that grew together, roots entwined,
and that you know the earth and the rain like my mouth,
since we are made of earth and rain.”

“Here I came to the very edge where nothing at all needs saying… and every day on the balcony of the sea wings open fire is born and everything is blue again like morning.”

“And I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering like ivy.”

“I like on the table,
when we're speaking,
the light of a bottle
of intelligent wine.”

“And our problems will crumble apart, the soul / blow through like a wind, and here where we live
will all be clean again, with fresh bread on the table.”

“I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.”

“Tomorrow we will only give them
a leaf of the tree of our love, a leaf
which will fall on the earth
like if it had been made by our lips
like a kiss which falls
from our invincible heights
to show the fire and the tenderness
of a true love.”

“The birds of night peck at the first stars
that flash like my soul when I love you.”